At my table we play something Mosleysh and personally I really enjoy the archetypal demihumans, but sometimes a player wants to play, say, a thief-mage.
My answer was “we’ll whip up a new class, as a hybrid of thief and mage”, then I slapped a tag on it saying “3200 XP to make level two”.
The thing bugged me a bit as a dirty solution. As I said I like the Mosley classes but the BECMI demihuman spellcaster rules I find a bit… lacking.
Anyway, the same weekend we came up with the 1d6 thieving skills system we also worked on separating race and class, while keeping full compatibility (except a couple of minor glitches and other things we changed on purpose). Here’s the modifiers for dwarves and halflings (already working for D6 thieving), elves are here:
Dwarf
- Maximum level: 12
- Experience modifier: +200 XP for first level, keep proportions afterwards.
- Can’t use long bows or two handed swords.
- Infravision: 60 feet
- +5 to saving throws
- Stonetelling: detect slanting passages, traps, shifting walls and new constructions rolling 1 or 2 on 1d6 (for D6 Thieving: +1 to find traps and secret doors)
- Languages: Common, Dwarvish, Gnomish, Kobold, Goblin.
Halfling
- Maximum level: 8
- Experience modifier: none
- Hit dice: reduce 1 step (d8->d6->d4, where it stops, go to d3 hit dice if you really hate halfling thieves or mages)
- Can’t use longbows or two handed swords (for BECMI, keep to small weapons).
- +1 to hit with missile weapons
- -2 to armor class when attacked by greater than man-sized creatures
- +1 to individual initiative
- +5 to saving throws
- Hiding: if quiet and still 90% outside, 1 or 2 on 1d6 inside (for D6 Thieving: +1 to hiding with an additional +4 if outside if keeping quiet and still)
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